[masaegu]

Originally Posted by GinaS

I don't know about that - I can be pretty dense. Plus you might have skipped over the part where I said I don't know any Japanese.

I hadn't skipped over that part. I just thought you were being ..... modest.

I've taught Business Japanese to North Americans working in Tokyo, some of whom had majored in Japanese in college back home. From that experience, I'm confident in saying that the majority of those Japanese majors could not have translated the passage in question even with the help of dictionaries.

First, from what you've said, I'm now thinking that it was Čapek talking about the groundbreaking schooling, rather than the speaker telling other people about how great it was. I kind of thought that from the beginning, but then I thought it might also make sense the other way.

It's "stated" that it was Čapek. Look at the やつはよく～～～～いうんだ part in the first and second lines, which means "He often says ~~~~."

So.. the speaker once asked Čapek if his friend was dead, and he said something like "That's my understanding"? Implying that this is suspicious in retrospect because you'd think he would know if his greatly esteemed friend was dead or not? I still feel like I'm missing something here. :/

Čapek would certainly know the exact answer but he never told the narrator. The narrator states that only in retrospect, he feels that there were myterious qualities about Čapek. He didn't feel quite this way when Čapek actually told him these things back then.

Is the rest of it essentially right? What is it that you can't buy with money?

"Essentially", yes. What that is is not told or even implied in the context you have provided. I would imagine it would be told somehow somewhere after this passage, not before.